Sugar: 6 cents per Ib.

Sugar: 6-c- per lb.

Sugar last week became food for Republican thought as the Senate Finance Committee returned to this bitter-sweet subject of tariff-writing. Full committee hearings were held on a plan for a sliding scale of sugar duties proposed by Chairman Reed Smoot as a substitute for the flat rate in the House tariff bill. Senator Smoot spent the weekend with President Hoover at the latter's Shenandoah National Park camp site, returned convinced that the President will approve the bill if his sliding scale is inserted, pondered sugar solemnly with the President.

The Smoot Plan. The present duty on world sugar is $2.20 per 100 lb., on Cuban sugar $1.76. Loud have been the protests against this increase, ominous the warnings to consumers. To quiet this clamor, Senator Smoot proposed a scale of sugar duties that would vary inversely to the wholesale New York price of sugar. His purpose was to stabilize that price at $6 per 100 lb. Insistent was he that it would produce sugar rates lower than those in the House bill. The top rate in the Smoot scale would be $3 per 100 lb., the bottom $1. Cuban imports would still benefit by a 20% differential. When sugar was exactly at $6 per 100 lb. the tariff would be $2.20, the present duty, with Cuba paying $1.76. The duty would decline as the price rose to $7.20 per 100 lb. at which point the minimum rate--$1 per 100 lb.--would come into effect. The duty would increase as the price fell below $6 until at $5.20 the maximum rate of $3 would be levied on world imports. Sugar tariff changes would be on a weekly basis, measured by the previous week's average price. The present wholesale price of New York sugar is $5.75 per 100 lb. on which, under the Smoot plan, the tariff would be $2.50 ($1.96 on Cuban). Said Senator Smoot: "Certainly nobody in the U. S. can complain of 6-c- sugar."

But complaint there was at the committee hearing on Senator Smoot's plan. Beet sugar growers did not think it would give them adequate protection. Farm representatives called it a "risky experiment." Senator Smoot's co-author of the Tariff Bill, Congressman Willis Chatman Hawley of Oregon, complained the plan should not "be even considered." Mississippi's Democratic Senator Pat Harrison commented sarcastically on the "fretful condition of this newborn sugar baby." "Certainly," said he, "the sleepless nights Senator Smoot must have spent with this crying curiosity . . . entitle him to a rest."

Committeeman Couzens. Other troubles beset the Republican majority of the Finance Committee in framing their tariff bill. Chief among these was the violation of their shut-mouth rule by James Couzens, a committee member. The committee's doings, the ups and downs of rates, were supposed to be secret, but when high-protectionist Senators commenced to "leak to interested business men, Senator Couzens, as independent as he is rich, could see no reason why he should not likewise tell his constituents what he was doing.

He embittered his colleagues by announcing that the committee had decided to retain the 25% ad valorem duty on automobiles, but to strike out the countervailing clause of the present law; to eliminate the House bill rates on shingles, logs and lumber.

"Cooler." The loud-speaking of Senator Couzens raised the temperature in the Finance Committee room but nothing was done to discipline him. Just as the opinion began to spread out of Washington that the Republicans framing the tariff bill were demoralized by the heat and the problem before them and, leaderless, were voting every which way, it was announced that the new cooling system in the Senate had been completely installed, that the equivalent of 350,000 lb. of ice per day would be "melted" to keep that chamber comfortable and steady its occupants' wobbly nerves, when the Senate reassembles Aug. 19.